Wednesday, November 11, 2015

It's Me & It's You: Facebook, Frailty, and Friendship

I don’t
want to be on Facebook. It makes me
feel badly. I like seeing my friends’
pictures of their families. I want to
know what to celebrate in their lives.

But it’s confusing, because it is making me sad.
And I am struggling with that sadness.
On the one hand I think it is the typical adolescent feelings of “not
being liked” that rides strongly across my view, then again it is the
disconnection (strangely enough) that I feel towards people I valued and
believed to value me.For me an accidental introvert and
inveterate worrier friendships have not come easily. After my mother
passed away, so much of how I related to the world necessarily changed.

Then came social media, a chance to stay
connected when my family moved 1300 miles away. I came to it with
reluctance and with some unease, most of it, as it turns out, completely
unfounded. I was able to see friends I'd left behind and then...the gift
of having friends from college (and before and after) who I did not know how
very much I missed came back into my grateful heart. But there’s an underbeat to Facebook’s increasingly real
presence. It is disconcerting and
almost prophetic in tone.

Who we are
online isn’t what we are in life. And
that slippage isn’t one that is easily or readily understood.

Photo by Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images

Social media and mobile devices have given us immediacy of contact. Constant
connection. Instant answers. No time differential. No waiting.
There is also some subterfuge, because what is on screen isn’t always
what it appears. Just as we know magazine
photographs are carefully scrutinized and polished to high shine and illusory
ideals, the screenshots that are presented, even of family and friends, may
have been composed just as carefully.
The editing software that was only available to the media few is now (largely) available to the masses. Because of
that, perhaps, what I saw on screen was discomfiting at times. The screen is something that offers the gaze relief—but it’s
reflective. What was once a way to stay
connected to people that you value, it has become distressingly competitive and
eerily isolating. When you look at your screen through the lens of social media—who do you see reflected back at you?

I’ve been trying to be
judicious on my use of this media. It’s
so difficult because of the blog. I
have a mighty small platform. My likes
are low in comparison to similar blog pages—and I know because Facebook
marketing makes it a point to let me know on a weekly basis just how poorly I’m
doing in popularity and what I should do to boost my circulation. Were it not for a certain amount of
responsibility I feel towards this corner of the Internet, I think I would
leave Facebook. And that’s alarming to
me. Why would something so seemingly
innocuous as this site offer me any stress at the thought of leaving it?

The strange truth for me
is that although Facebook is supposed to keep me in touch with friends who are
so far away I cannot “see” their snapshots in any other way, it’s the people
that share my sandbox here that seem to engage with me (or without me) on
social media. I may be heightened to
awareness about this because my Facebook friends are small in number. Less than 200 and growing smaller too (I’ll
get to that bit in a minute) and there’s a reason for it. On social media, with two exceptions, I
will not accept a friend request from someone I do not know or have spoken
with.

And this is, in part, the
reason: one day last week my son was
sick, and it allowed me the opportunity to be with him and take care of him in
a way that is slipping from me as the years pass by. We found a book that I started to read
aloud to him until he could fall asleep.We took pictures and even a specific
page that Joe wanted noted. It
was a way to mark a moment of our day that could be shared with family and
friends who'd want to know and might be far away. But as I loaded it up on Instagram (a
preferred site for me because of its structure and visual appeal), I deleted it
from Facebook. It's a
moment I'm not sure I wanted all the people who were "friends" to
see. Nor did I want to be
reminded how many or few would care enough to like it or comment on it. That made me pause.

It is disconcerting
because of the way the platform works to see my own children’s pictures go
unliked by friends while mutual friends pictures or updates are liked in
minutes. “Here is my son who just
competed in his first tournament!” gets little attention while “Oh my word, I
have a hangnail and it bothers me,” gets 50 likes in the same amount of
time. Huh. Puzzlement. Cue Idina
Menzel’s directive to“Let it go.”

Here’s the buggery: I have tried. Those people for whom I felt a sadness of disengagement I’ve
reached out to. It has not worked. In fact, it seems to have

photo credit: careeryenta.wordpress.com

done the
opposite. It appears, despite my effort
at social media goodwill, that I have been determinedly forgotten. I do not
think or wish to think that it's with malice or forethought that this occurs, I
think it's just life. The passage of time, very much like my son Sam and the bookmarks that missed him, fashions the people you support to be the people
you see and help carry your burdens in real time. The ones you play with
at recess, I think, are the ones you actively follow and try to hold
close. There are exceptions to this of
course, and right now I can list at least two names for which this does not
hold true in my life, but otherwise it seems to be proving the rule. Many shared “friends” do not extend
invitations to you in real life and real time.
And this is hurtful because of the “mean girl” behavior it mimics.

I have
written before how to avoid those very same reminders through social
media. Manipulating Facebook's settings so you can "unfollow" or
"restrict" what you have to see of someone or, conversely, what they
see of you. And this does serve a purpose when someone you do
like uses their page to endlessly promote links or political views that you do
not share, rather than snapshots of their life you'd like to partake in. The uncomfortable bit comes in when I
wonder, then, how much of this person I do want to see or far more hair raising
still—see me? Then I had an especially revelatory
incident when Joe competed in his first golf tournament. I made a picture for it, and posted the
following on the blog FB page:

This is
my son Joe. He is in his first golf
tournament—ever. Told it would be a
learning tournament, we thought it would be good practice for him. It wasn’t a learning tournament. It was an actual tournament. Joe’s not used to keeping score or choosing
which clubs for a hole. He was placed
in a group with kids who had private coaches and monogrammed bags. To say he was intimidated is putting it
mildly. As I saw him, getting yelled at
by volunteer “coaches” and monitors, my blood pressure rose. I could hear it thick and heavy in my ears. Every hackle was raised and all I wanted to
do was scream at every person there while I saw this child wipe away a
frustrated tear quickly and quietly.

“Let’s
pull him out!” I said to my husband.

John’s face was set, his teeth clenched,
“He’s being humiliated out there, and I can’t say anything or they’ll throw me
off the course.”

“Please. Let’s just leave.” I already had Sam’s clubs packed and was ready to head to the
car. He nodded.

John
texted me minutes later: “Joe’s staying
in it. He wants to play.”

I
couldn’t believe it. I was shocked and
bitter and angry. Every humiliation I
had at his age came back to haunt me, every protective instinct I had was
there. I didn’t want this for him. Parents were quietly mocking him. All I wanted was to get him somewhere safe
and far from the maddening crowd.

“He’s
staying in it. He’s tough.”

“No,” I
thought, “what he is, is called brave.”
I don’t think I had the wherewithal to keep going despite being told and
shown that others were better than me; I may have been forced to finish, but I
would never have tried again.

Joe has
found a reserve of courage at 10. And
since he’s found it now, I’m willing to bet that it runs deep. It’s inspiring. And it’s made me take a step or two that I’ve found hard to move
beyond and around because I’ve allowed my fear to shake away any resolve I
had. But Joe’s taught me today at a
nine-hole tournament that it’s never too late or too soon to display your
strength. I hope you find courage in
reading this today, and do something you need to do. It’s never too late (or too soon) to start living the life you
were meant to have. Happy Halloween!

I posted
it and someone even commented on it, and then I deleted it. Because my youngest son, who has taken it
upon himself to edit me on this platform as well as Instagram, said to me, “Did
you get Joe’s permission Mommy?”
“No.” “Well, I don’t think you
should put anything about us to people out there unless you know we’re okay
with it.” Big swallow pause. “You’re right. I’ll take it down.”

The kids and my Dad including a wary Jake.

My kids
are my champions; they encourage me to write.
They think I tell good stories.
They feel I matter and what I say matters. But they are individuals and, so far, they can distinguish
between the screen and life. They want
to be active participants in their lives and they are not characters in a
book. They are not filler spaces. It made me look hard and fast at my
intentions for social media. And then
the signs kept coming: An innocuous
status update about watching Spy, and John asking to please take it down. “Why?”
“Well, no one needs to know what we’re doing every weekend. I don’t want to know what they’re doing, why
do you need to tell them what we are.
Just take it down. Stick to your
intentions.”

My
intentions. They were good. No political posts. I had enough the last election of sifting
through my friends’ stances to make me actually feel despondent. And because my views differed, I felt
alienated from them not because of anything I

posted, but because of what I
liked. I couldn’t sit across from them
and argue it all out. Everything they
thought I felt was transposed onto me by a “like” reported by Facebook’s
algorithm. It was sobering. And the alienation continued until the
election was immediate history and their guy won. I said nothing either way.
I liked those pages to support those candidates true, just like I like
pages or authors because I’d like to see what they may be up to, but I did not
wish to discuss it unless I could actually discuss it. So you could see my point of view and learn
from it, just as I could learn from yours.
Soundbites get no one anywhere.

I
recently had an illuminating conversation with the person in charge of the social
media posts for the National Museum of American History. I was upset at a post that apparently
supported anti-vaccination. A hot
button topic always, but particularly because of the measles outbreak in
California last year, it highlighted the Museum’s collection on early
anti-vaccination propaganda. The

synopsis at the top of the photo was inconclusive but seemed to weigh heavily
pro-anti vaccination and the folks in that camp were running with it, the shares and comments were extensive in that vein. I posted, “poorly
done NMAH.” I was referred to by name
in order to comment further. (Erin, the moderator for these posts, offered to take down that comment later, because I told her I felt I was called
out publicly for disagreeing.) Anyway,
I clicked through to the article in question, which I felt was also
inconclusive and vague. When we spoke
through messages about it, Erin offered that it was one in a series, and
because of the way Facebook worked only this one showed prominently in the newsfeed. I said I understood, but because of that,
then a reference had to be made to the fact it was one in a series. She countered saying, rightly, that it would
take “linguistic gymnastics” to make the article in question pro
anti-vaccination, although the NMAH’s role is to remain impartial. I agreed, but I reiterated again that no one
would read the article. We have become an audience for whom the first two or three lines of any post is the actual story. It isn’t enough. You are not a soundbite, and neither am
I. Your likes on your social media page
may give me a glimpse of you, but it isn’t all you. It isn’t all me either, but you’d know that, wouldn’t you?If you were my friend, I mean.

I want to offer snapshots, real snapshots of
my life, which for me are my kids growing and achieving and my Dad’s status as
he declines for friends and family here and around the world. There is no other way to

do it so
immediately. Within minutes family can
see my Dad and find out what my kids are up to without having to email and ask
or wait for an update on a Christmas card.
Causes I want to promote—to end child trafficking, to highlight social justice I give voice to if the “click through” and subsequent research moves me
to do so.

But
Jake’s words ran in my head. Who was
reading my updates and looking at my pictures?
Were they people with whom I would share these ideas and offer a glimpse
of my still life if we met for coffee?
It made me realize that the answer was increasingly no. And I had to figure out what to do about
it.

And
moreover, there was a security issue as well.
I

www.techhive.com

had avoided social media for years because I did not want to be
found. Privacy meant just that. But the blog makes that almost
impossible. I do not like to write personal updates about my family. For me it has
always been about writing ideas out. But I did
take coding measures to make sure pictures couldn’t be lifted and used. That is impossible on Facebook. Anyone can right-click and save a
photo. So who was out there as a
“friend” who could save a photo of my children or work or father and use
it? Could I be certain that everyone on
my list would not do such a thing? The
personal politics of Facebook were becoming increasingly complicated.

The
platform works against me—you find out what your friend has “liked” on
Facebook. For me the liking of
conservative politicians backlashed into an actual retaliation on
Facebook. I never promoted a

link, mind
you, just liked pages. But my comments
have been deleted on friends’ posts and my blog page has been unliked (something I know because first, I have few in number in either camp, and second because of Facebook's marketing group). “Unfriend them,” John says, “who needs
it?” But it seems so…so rude to
do. Yet the time spent thinking about
the whys and wherefores of a particular friend’s movements on social media
towards approving of my online life was unproductive and depressing. No one, not a single person, wants to feel
that they aren’t liked.

When
I’ve asked friends why they don’t post more, the answer is universal, “No one
likes it, and it

makes me feel bad.” Social media, the very vehicles clouded in misty
cobwebs of code ridden strands that are supposed to be cords of connection, end
up slipping through our grasp because of human reactions that can be cold and
unkind: irritation, jealousy, pride.... It isn't much, after all, to
"like" a friend's moments of triumph and intimacy. To acknowledge
their need to be seen which folds them back into a warm feeling of being
understood and necessary. I have tried to
choose then not to read presumed subtext into those moments of celebration
where my name is not included or my wishes unacknowledged. I just
continue to offer praise with a touch of something inanimate that transforms
magically to something powerful that may mean something to its recipient.

After all, if feelings are hurt when moments
represented in "posts" are ignored, then the opposite must be true
too. It doesn't seem to cost much to offer someone else, a priceless
friend no less, some joy. To fight feelings of isolation and
despair that can lead to all manners of ill and sad happenings, human
connection remains the only real response. Who would have ever believed
that a keystroke could cause such security through time and distance?
It's utterly fantastic, the possibility in it.
And yet, there is a growing unease about it all. I don’t think the subtext is imagined after
all. I think it is not subliminal, in
fact, I think that the stories woven on Facebook, collectively, is a
substantial metanarrative on us as the body human. And because of its relative anonymity—the ways in which a screen
allows the space to say things we may never say in real time to a real
person—it has become unwieldy, seductive and far too powerful. This all harkens back then
to my allowing people to float in Facebook ether—why was I friends with
them? If I didn’t want to hear their stories—because they showcased a
life of revelry that I could not be a part of or, worse still, if I simply wasn’t
interested in them, why was I friends with them? Did I really want them
to see my Dad (and my own pain) at his disintegration? I should only have people on that list
that I could post anything without worry. If that is the case, then,
it's a smaller list.

A "how-to" save on FB without itit being shared on the feed(click on the snap to enlarge and read)

I
have been unfriended twice now, the first time I didn't even really notice it. (That's saying something.) The second time I realized it one day, that I had been unfriended by a woman who was the mother of a
friend of my son. It felt uncomfortable for the briefest of moments, then
I felt relieved. Because she was unwilling to be 'inauthentic'
perhaps, to use a buzzword, to the reality of her life. We were not
friends. And there was no use pretending otherwise. Perhaps she did not
want reminders of my life or impressions in her newsfeed. I respect that.

So in too many fretful moments of self-reflection, I have found
that I am a very difficult person to argue with, I decided that the time I
spent thinking about a few people on my friends' list was inordinate. I needed to unfriend them. For one of these, it was
not a hardship, I barely knew her. But
the other, that was tough. Because she
was someone who is living

where I am now, travels in the same real-time circles;
it was even more difficult to do it.
But the truth is, we are not friends.
I no longer wished to share any part of my life with her, and that meant
that I needed to let her go. None of
these decisions are done for me without prayer, and in this case, God was
clearly telling me to move forward.
Instances arose where I could have spent some kind of time with her that
were naturally blocked. Even though it
was my choice, I still felt sad—it was a loss.
An ending, I guess. I felt, feel
now, sad. My friends matter so much to
me, they make up the pieces of the jigsaw picture of my life. It hurts to lose them, even if it is the
best thing. Yet, conversely, it was a small stand too, a declaration of independence. A spin
back to the real world and what I want this facet of my life to mean.

I got a piece back though—one that may be critical to how the
finished product ends. At my dentist’s
chair I made a new friend, someone so lovely and kind that I felt a more
profound relief in welcoming her to my circle then I did in letting go moments
before. Angela fit. And made my picture more clear. This is how it works. How I knew I did the right thing.

I don’t want to quit Facebook.
Because of it, I reconnected with some of the oldest friends I’ve ever
had. I’ve been able to communicate with my dear friend George, who lives so far away and get the

immediacy of her life. My family can check and see what my children
are doing and what stage my father is in.
A friend I barely knew in my old town has given me the gift of getting
to know her better, and because of who Jessica is, I can tell you that is
something amazing. I get to see what my
college roommate is up to and comment about how beautiful her daughters are. I’ve found support and encouragement, humor
and constancy. None of this would be
possible without Facebook. Our circles seem to wane and widen dependent upon
circumstance and time but the ability we have to tighten them has never been so
immediate and powerful. It can be a tool to help live my life
intentionally.

In order for it to work well though, so that the people I call
friend can call me one as well, I will be looking at this list with a careful
eye. And I will be unfriending more
rather than less. Maybe it’ll be an
exclusive club, but I can think of no other way to make sure those circles of family, of friends, of fellowship
keep moving and evolving, not just revolving around with me listless on one
tilting side. To make sure people I have loved are valued is, after all,
an extremely worthwhile goal.

It
may not work all the time, but I am going to try to make sure that I see what
is going on both virtually and in real-time for those who I am privileged to
call friend. That has to matter, I am more convinced with what I see and
read and am so despondent about, that connection is what is necessary. To
truly connect and feel less alone, means a collective ability to see and begin
to make change for the better for so many in our communities. The circles can widen so much that everyone
will have a place on the inside. The expansion can occur because you have
less to keep up with, and possibly more willingness to check in and do so now
that the list is whittled down to what (and who) you find important. And the love you give on the expansion will
come back to strengthen your steps as you move through your life.

It's the best kind of use of social media I can
think of, to not reduce it and abandon it because of polemics, but to embrace
it through a counterintuitive medium in the need for connection. Real
connection, real investment in each other's lives. As we turn to the holidays that bring us back to the values and
people we hold dear, I hope you'll join me. It's going to be wonderful to
see what the love in your circle brings back home to you, its center.

What the story said...my reviews on goodreads

“You must understand, this is one of those moments.” “What moments?” “One of the moments you keep to yourself,” he said. “What do you mean?” I said. “why?” “We’re in a war,” he said. “The story of this war—dates, names, who started it, why—that belongs to everyone. [….] But something like this—this is yours. It belongs only to you. And me. Only to us” (56). This moment, in Téa Obreht’s lyrical first novel, The Tiger’s Wife, tells you the entirety of the story of love and loss, of memory, maps and war, of science, fables and imagined histories. The tale, set in a fictional Balkan province, is about the relationship between the narrator, Natalia and her grandfather who is a doctor. And the story involves the wars that have ravaged that area for years.

If you think back to the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia, you may remember the horror and shock of those years of unending war. The bombing of a 400 year old bridge, the massacres, the deadening of Sarajevo. While none of these events are overtly, or even covertly, covered in the novel, their echo remains. This is a novel whose strength lies in the ability to translate myth and fable, to make the moments that seem almost unknowable known. The excerpt offered in the beginning of this review is an example of that, the Grandfather takes the young Natalia past curfew to witness the surreal site of a starving elephant being led on the city streets to the closed city zoo, the place of their weekly pilgrimages. During mercurial times, there was this moment of placidity and fantasy. The war which raged and continued and was irrational as wars are, there is the fantastical presence of an elephant sloping up the quiet neighborhood street. While Natalia frets that no one will believe her, her grandfather corrects her idea by telling her that history can be something personalized and intimate. Not meant to be shared by the world, but by those who you love and trust to see your vision. It makes sense, because when histories are challenged and threatened, documents concerning your birth, the death of your families are challenged or lost, history becomes something far more ephemeral. Far more illusory unless it is placed in the permanence of your own heart.

She begins Chapter 2 by saying, “Everything necessary to understand my Grandfather lies between two stories: the story of the tiger’s wife, and the story of the deathless man” (32). So it is between these poles of myth and story that we can locate the history of this narrator and her grandfather, both physicians, both straddling the line between science and home remedy. I could tell you at length about both, but that truly would be spoiling the journey of the story for you. But I will say that the language Obreht uses is so languid and lush, masterful and mindful that you begin to be seduced by it all. So reason, the questions of markings of slippery occurrences of war that do belong to the world that could ground the reader in the world Obreht is translating is lost because that is the moment she is NOT choosing to share. But here is the thing. I needed it. Even in a footnote or an afterward. I needed a timeline of the events that brought the destruction of these people to such impossibilities of existence. Because even though it is a public history, it is one I do not know well. It would be wrong to assume the knowledge on the part of a Western audience I think, it’s unfortunate that this is not a familiar landscape or language. I know, in the recesses of my mind I know the wars in the Balkans. The horrors, the rape camps of Bosnia, the destruction, the evacuation of Serbians…but I don’t know enough, not nearly enough to be lulled into this lush tale. A part of me refused to be completely seduced by it. Because I didn’t understand enough about it.

There is a way in which myth sustains us when horrors are too much. When person and home and identity fall away, and where you cannot locate your birthplace on a map, because it has been eliminated, what do you hold onto except your stories? As the author writes, “We had used a the map on every road trip we had ever taken, and it showed in the marker scribbling all over it: the crossed-out areas we were supposed to avoid…. I couldn’t find Zdrevkov, the place where my grandfather died, on that map. I couldn’t find Brejevina either, but I had known in advance that it was missing, so we had drawn it in” (16). Map lines, map dots, erased and redrawn because of war. How do you locate who you are, if you cannot really know where you are from? The erasing of history, of place, of belonging, of self is such a legitimate tragic legacy of war. So it is understandable that the novel moves between these two myths to bookend it, asking the reader to locate the grandfather and the narrator in its midst. I just think that the novel, which is a remarkable achievement for such a young writer, would have been that much more strong, viscerally, had it had the historical reference points it alluded to. That being said, though, it is a novel of quiet questions and loud answers and makes you wonder long after you’ve set it aside. Questions like, “What is the moment you have? The one you find that belongs to you? Who will you share it with and what familiar myth might you create?”